James loves to sit down with a book and peruse the pages. He also loves to have Mommy or Daddy read to him. One of his favourite books at the moment is "There's a Wocket in my Pocket" by Dr. Suess. I have a few issues with this fact.
Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Dr. Suess' books. I myself enjoyed many a Dr. Suess book as a wee lad. My issue is with this particular "Book of Ridiculous Rhymes" for very young children who can't yet read.
You see, Dr. Suess makes up words to create a rhyme. This is a Dr. Suess trademark of sorts. He'll rhyme "bofa" with "sofa and "zable" with "table". How this is supposed to help a child learn to read I'll never understand. Learning to read English is not an easy task. Why do we make it that much tougher for kids by having them read books with fake words mixed in with real ones. James can't tell them apart. How is he supposed to know "bofa" is not an actual word? Shouldn't a child be able to read real words before we introduce fake ones for comedic purposes?
Before you tell me to take a chill-pill, please realize I'm not really that upset over the fact James has taken a liking to this nonsensical book containing the actual sentence "like the tellar and the nellar and the gellar and the dellar and the bellar and the wellar and the zellar in the cellar". I just find it interesting that we expect our children to learn to read proper English when the books we give them contains text that is at least a third non-existent in any decent dictionary. We're just making a tough task even tougher.
